Chorus pedal is shot, distorts/clips signal bad

I'd start by cleaning it with Deoxit D5 (or whatever else you have for electrical cleaner, although D5 is superior to anything I know of. I use a 1/4" burnisher too.

If the box has pots, clean them with D5 too.

Sometimes I'll open something like a pedal up and have it plugged in and running, then get a pencil and start tapping around. Sometimes you can find one part that when you push gently on it the sound will screw up or get better, and if that's the case, check the solder connections on that component, especially if the are pc board mounted because pc mounted components developing cracks where they solder on the pc board. That's the #1 screw up I've seen on small electronic gizmos.
 
dintymoore said:
i'd start by cleaning it with deoxit d5 (or whatever else you have for electrical cleaner, although d5 is superior to anything i know of. I use a 1/4" burnisher too.

If the box has pots, clean them with d5 too.

Sometimes i'll open something like a pedal up and have it plugged in and running, then get a pencil and start tapping around. Sometimes you can find one part that when you push gently on it the sound will screw up or get better, and if that's the case, check the solder connections on that component, especially if the are pc board mounted because pc mounted components developing cracks where they solder on the pc board. That's the #1 screw up i've seen on small electronic gizmos.
Click to expand...

^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^^
 
Lt. Bob said:
^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^^
Click to expand...

?

The broken solder part of it or the whole post? The knobs are dead silent when I turn them. Its the pedal that is clipping. I wasn't referring to scratchy pots. The pedal is producing actual distortion.

I will give it a go. I have nothing to lose.
 
actually I hadn't listened to the clip before.
That doesn't sound like the pedal to me ....... it's running into a 'puter program?
It sounds to me like the distortion you get when you overdrive a digital device.
I'm sure you have it down where it doesn't clip but I don't find that to always be enough.
I have a DAT recorder that'll get that same sound unless I run it's levels at .... wait, let me go look ... -12 ....... any higher than that and it will distort.
Now that's my DAT machine and I realize that not everything behaves like that but I bet some do.

Here's a few things to try.
First ...... run the pedal into an amp ...... that way you can tell for sure where the problem is.
If you run it into a clean amp and it distorts ...... then it's the pedal and I'd do all the things dinty suggested.
Dirty pots can cause a distortion sometimes and yet not make any noise.
Really though ....... I doubt that's it ...... I'd be more inclined to look for fractured solder joints. Also make sure your power supply is putting out the right juice.

But if it sounds ok thru an amp then it's gonna somewhere where the git interfaces with the program.
In that case I'd try lowering the signal you're sending the sim even if you feel that it's clearly below clipping. Run it somewhere around -12 and see if that clears it up. You can compensate for the volume level at the output if that takes care of it.
It really wouldn't surprise me if that pedal is sending a hotter signal that the input converters can handle well.
 
It does it through my amp. I don't really use pedals into my computer, I only did it for the sound clip. There very well could be a bit of added digital distortion there but it breaks up on the super clean setting of my Mark V almost as badly.
 
oh ..... well that's not good.
About all you can do are the things dinty suggested.
As I said, it's possible for a pot to cause that ..... not super likely but possible none the less so clean 'em.

And try looking around for fractured solder joints. They're quite common actually. You can shove stuff around to see if it helps though since it's doing it while you're playing it'll be kinda hard to do that. You'll need help or maybe re-amp a guitar track thru it so you can hear if it makes any difference.

If you know soldering at all you can get a strong magnifying glass and look carefully at the soldered side of the circuit board and you can see them BUT, if you've never had one pointed out to you before they can be hard to identify.
It'll look like a flat-gray ring (very small ) right around the wire where it sticks out of the board and the solder's wrapped around it.

How old is the pedal?
You also could have a bad resistor or cap in there in which case you're probably out of luck for doing it yourself.
 
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